Women centered online beauty and grooming marketplace Purplle has gathered up $75 million in its Series E round led by private value firm Kedaara Capital. This is the second funding round for the Mumbai-based startup in 2021 which raised $45 million in its Series D round in March.
Purplle has raised the new round at a valuation of $600 million, according to industry sources. The company was valued at around $300 million during the last round. According to Purplle, the new infusion will be used for the company’s development as well as investments in other beauty tech players.
Purplle sells beauty, personal care items and gadgets for grooming. Besides aggregating results of various brands, it also sells its private label on the platform.
The nine-year-old company claims to have more than 1,000 brands and in excess of 7,000,000 month to month active clients on the beauty marketplace.
During the last round, Purplle’s early invested Ivy Cap Ventures also took a partial exit with 22-overlap gains. According to the company, IvyCap bought a 30% stake in Purplle for Rs 15 crore in 2015, when the company was valued at Rs 50 crore.
Purplle, which was near hitting profitability in FY19 saw its operating income come around 14% to Rs 86.8 crore during FY20. Its misfortunes flooded by 512.3% to Rs 24.92 crore during FY20 from Rs 4.07 crore in FY19.
The Manish Taneja-led company rivals Nykaa and other horizontal majors like Amazon and Flipkart. Apart from accelerating development, Purplle is probably going to utilize the returns from the new asset to make investments in emerging D2C companies.
In March, it had made its maiden investment in Coimbatore-based Juicy Chemistry. Ladies centered beauty brands and marketplaces have been having some fantastic luck for the past two years. While Sugar Cosmetic, MamaEarth, Plum and Wow Skin have raised new assets in 2021, Nykaa had made its debut on the stock exchange on Thursday.
